A Pharaoh discovers the continuous debuff called a hangover, and receives a paper bag that nobody will admit to sending.
This is a translation of an originalArtificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 05 悪酔王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
"…Ugh, my head… it is splitting…"
A dull pain throbbing from somewhere inside, and an indescribable discomfort occupying the region of his stomach. A direct hit from a God Card had not hurt this much. His high-spec brain was throwing errors across the board.
"So this is the living world's continuous debuff called a 'hangover'… Last night the feast with Joey and the others was so enjoyable that I channelled too much of the magic called beer…"
He crawled unsteadily out of bed and drained the cold water from the luxury water server in one go. It helped a little, but the debuff would not lift. A look at the clock showed, mercilessly, that the hour of reporting to KaibaCorp was approaching.
"Nngh… to have taken damage of this order and still be required to reach the castle by the appointed hour. Do the salaried men of the living world fight under special rules this brutal every single day…?"
Feeling the harshness of modern society sink into him afresh, Atem pushed his arms into a clean T-shirt and made his heavy way to the office.
But he was a former Pharaoh, after all. However eaten away his body might be, once he faced his desk his processing power did not falter.
"…Ah. That construction plan for the new server — the security set cards are weak. Send the bug on page three to the Graveyard (read: fix it) immediately. …And this AI algorithm is one move short. I shall rewrite it."
With dead-fish eyes, pressing his temple with a finger now and then, Atem struck the keyboard faster than the eye could follow and processed to perfection, before noon, tasks that would take an ordinary engineer several days.
The staff around him trembled. "Adviser Aten's gaze is even sharper than usual today" — it was simply that he felt ill — "his efficiency is nothing short of divine…!"
In the afternoon, walking the corridor of the executive floor, he saw Seto Kaiba, unusually still in the country, coming towards him at the head of a group of men in black.
The moment Seto's eye caught Atem, he smiled fearlessly, as if to say he had been waiting for this, and snapped the Duel Disk on his left arm into life.
"Hmph. Atem! You appear at exactly the right moment. I left you to await the blade through my overseas trip, and this morning the deck adjustments were completed. Come to the field at once!"
Seto bore down on him at prime-era intensity.
But Atem's internal network could not process the tremendous volume Seto put out and had gone entirely over capacity. The voice rang in his head and hurt.
Atem drew his brows into a deep furrow, pressed one hand to his stomach and shook his head weakly.
"…I decline, Kaiba. Withdraw for today."
"What did you say!? You would refuse my challenge!"
"Do not shout, it rings in my head… It is a deeply pathetic thing to say, but I have taken a direct hit from a Trap Card called a 'hangover,' the first of my life. If I take that murderous aura of yours — the fighting spirit of the Blue-Eyes — head-on, I shall Special Summon the entire contents of my stomach onto the field where I stand…"
"…"
Seto's movement stopped dead.
The lights of the Duel Disk blinked emptily as Seto stared at Atem's sagging figure and the faint smell of alcohol that still hung about him.
Then he drove into Atem a bone-chilling look of exasperation, deeper even than at the time of the apartment raid.
"Atem… there is a limit to how thoroughly you may steep yourself in the bad habits of the living world. To be useless with a hangover on the Monday that opens the week is, for an officer of my KaibaCorp, worthy of ten thousand deaths."
"The work is all finished, perfectly, before noon…"
"That is not the point! For a man who is the King of Duelists to cancel a holy war — a Duel — with me at the last minute through slack self-management. Don't make me laugh! Hmph. The mood is spoiled. Go back to your desk and sip your barley tea quietly."
Seto spat it out, swept the hem of his coat around violently and left.
The harsh words at his back, Atem, in a crawling sort of dejection, somehow made it to his own desk.
He sat down in front of the computer, held his throbbing head and sighed deeply.
"…I have made Kaiba angry, and no wonder. But as I am now, I truly could not withstand the attack power of that Blue-Eyes of his. Three thousand…"
It was his own doing, but he felt a little awkward at having betrayed his rival's expectations. And then he noticed an unfamiliar, expensive-looking paper bag sitting at the corner of his desk.
Looking inside, he found a mountain of hangover remedies, astonishing in its completeness.
Over-the-counter stomach medicine, turmeric shots, bottles of electrolyte drink, and further, instant miso soup with freshwater clams, and high-grade concentrated vitamin supplements. A lineup that left nothing wanting.
Atem's eyes went round and he spoke to the employee at the next desk.
"You there. Who put this on my desk?"
"Ah, Adviser. Mr Isono — the President's own man — came in person a little while ago and left it there without a word. …Is it some kind of classified sample under special orders?"
"…I see."
A soft smile came to Atem's lips.
There was no chance Isono would do anything this thoughtful on his own initiative. Having pushed him away with a harsh "worthy of ten thousand deaths on a Monday," the man had, behind the scenes, immediately instructed his people to buy up every hangover remedy they could find.
"Kaiba… for all he says with his mouth, he is as clumsy a man as ever."
The kindness of a rival who, in his own roundabout way, had been concerned for his condition seeped slowly into his aching head. A little happier, Atem took out a cold electrolyte drink, wetted his throat and put the stomach medicine in his mouth.
Thanks to modern society's specific remedies — and Seto's clumsy consideration — by the time afternoon came, that dreadful headache had eased dramatically.
"Good. My Life (read: condition) is recovering as well. I shall clear the remaining work in one push!"
From there Atem displayed a performance still higher than the morning's.
He finished checking specification after specification at lightning speed and annihilated the new game's bugs on the instant. That overwhelming efficiency was at a level no one could believe belonged to a man who had been hungover.
"Hff… that concludes every phase for today."
The moment the clock hand reached the appointed hour, Atem shut the computer down smartly.
Zero overtime, perfect benefits.
Storing Seto's paper bag carefully in his own bag and shrugging on a clean, unsagging suit jacket, Atem left the office with a light step.
"Tonight I shall drink that miso soup Kaiba gave me and rest properly. …And the next time I face you, I shall show you my finest draw."
Bathed comfortably in the evening wind of Domino City, the King of Duelists, who had fully mastered the systems of the living world, set off home to a warm house.
Fully recovered from the hangover, Atem took a mouthful of cold water drawn from his prized luxury water server and swallowed with satisfaction.
The clam miso soup and hangover kit from Kaiba had been enormously effective. The fog in his brain had cleared entirely, and his vitality — his Life — was charged back up to its ceiling of 4000.
The next morning. Atem arranged his sharply pointed hair to perfection, pushed his arms into a fine suit without a single crease and set off dashingly for KaibaCorp.
——Now then… I refused yesterday on the grounds of a hangover, but today Kaiba will assuredly be lying in wait with his Duel Disk raised, at an even higher pitch than yesterday…
Looking up at the building, Atem quietly set a card of caution face-down in his chest.
No one knew that man's tenacity better than he did, across a thousand years. He was prepared to pay the bill for yesterday's last-minute cancellation.
…But.
Even after he passed through the heavy automatic doors of the executive floor, that roaring cry of "Atem!!" did not come.
"…Hm? Where is Kaiba?"
Puzzled, he asked Isono, who was passing his desk, and the man in black bowed reverently.
"Sir! The President departed for the United States on the company jet first thing this morning, to handle an emergency at the North American branch and to attend the launch of the new Duel Links satellite. He is not expected back this week."
"…I see."
Relief, and at the same time a sense of being let down, came over him.
——I should say I escaped with my life, I suppose… Heh. You are as restless a man as ever.
In an office from which the enormous typhoon named his rival had departed, Atem quietly started up the computer at his desk.
His days from that point were the very image of the perfect executive.
Mornings were debugging on the new game project. Let Atem once turn his eye on the code and the Trap Cards called bugs were exposed on the instant and sent to the Graveyard.
Afternoons were optimisation of the AI's reasoning algorithms. With the insight into human psychology and the grasp of a board that he had cultivated as Pharaoh, he elevated in a single hour, to a god-tier meta, adjustments the development team had agonised over for months.
While the staff around him worked overtime with bloodshot eyes, Atem's desk alone was always in order.
And the instant the clock hand reached half past five——the appointed hour——Atem smartly shrugged on his jacket.
"I shall leave ahead of you. The remaining tasks are all stored in the shared folder on the cloud. Check them over."
"What, you're finished already, Adviser Aten!? Thank you — it's perfect…!"
With the staff's respect and awe at his back, Atem slipped into the elevator. Zero overtime, out precisely on the dot. A total victory — Life held at 4000 — within the living world's system of labour.
Back at the tower, Atem's "mindful living (sort of)" was in ever finer form.
Dinner was a special curry summoned by a single press of a button on the fully automatic cooking pot.
The laundry came out of the fully automatic washer-dryer perfectly soft, so he pulled it straight from the hanger and wore it. Hanger to closet, closet to body——the "full automation of the rotation," stripped to the last of every wasteful phase, had by now settled completely into his lifestyle.
He poured top-quality cold-brew barley tea, extracted with the luxury water server, into his favourite glass and looked down at the night view of Domino City from the balcony.
"Heh… I am satisfied, as I am now."
That dark age of dreading a throttled budget SIM, being thrown out of an illegally built apartment and holding his head over the reasons-for-applying section of a résumé might never have happened.
And then——the day finally came.
The first payday since he had begun work at KaibaCorp.
At the desk in his room, Atem opened the online payslip page on the screen of his budget smartphone (throttling lifted).
The living world's rows of figures held no resistance for him now.
"Let us see… so this is the compensation for my labour."
He scrolled down, and the instant his eye ran over the item at the very bottom — [net payment (take-home)] — Atem's fine features froze in spite of him.
"…Wha—!?"
What was displayed was an enormous figure, well over ten times the monthly income he had once chipped out of solo convenience-store night shifts.
Even with a corresponding amount deducted by the powerful Trap Cards called various taxes and social insurance contributions, the figure for the pure Life (read: balance) left in hand was simply beyond scale.
"A sum of this size, drawn — transferred — in a single turn…!?"
Atem stared hard at the phone in his hand.
The three million yen in prize money had been a one-off bonus for winning a tournament, but this was a regular income promised every month. With a sum like this, the regular rent on the apartment a year from now would sting less than a mosquito bite.
"…Is Kaiba unexpectedly generous…? No — or has he overestimated me and transferred a reward in error, because I was useless with a hangover…?"
The man who had once managed the entire wealth of Egypt tilted his head in earnest before modern Japan's payroll system.
Just then, well timed, a chat message flew in from Mokuba abroad.
"Atem! Today's your first payday, right? Have you looked at the payslip?"
"Yes, Mokuba. I have just checked it. …But is the amount not somewhat too large? A transfer error, or a miscalculation on Kaiba's part…"
In reply, a sticker of Mokuba roaring with laughter arrived from the other side of the screen.
"Ahaha! It's not an error! As if Nii-sama would make a mistake like that."
"Then why is the sum so large…?"
"Obviously! The output you've produced this month is worth dozens of our engineers. The speed you wipe out bugs, the precision of the Duel Links AI build — development keeps filing thank-you reports with screaming in them, saying it's all off the scale. Nii-sama's got too much pride to ever give a soft evaluation, but when results are delivered, his principle is to pay a fair price for them, mercilessly."
Following the characters on the screen, Atem's eyes slowly widened.
"Nii-sama said this. 'Set against the profit that man's brain has brought my company, a figure on offer (read: take-home) of that order is no more than an obvious investment. So long as he continues to deliver results to match it, I have no intention of holding anything back.'"
"…"
Atem laid the phone face-down and let out a quiet breath.
It was not that Kaiba had extended him some special mercy.
It was purely proof of an evaluation — coldly fair, and packed with the highest respect — of the fact that he had given his whole strength in this living world and cleared the game he had been set, the work, to perfection.
"Heh… hahaha!"
A laugh welled up naturally and escaped Atem's mouth.
"Well said, Kaiba… I see. That is very much your way of setting the rules."
Not mercy, not pity. To exert every ability he possessed to its limit, and to receive a perfect victory reward for it.
Was this not precisely the relationship the two of them had been playing out on the Duel field all along?
Atem walked over to the luxury water server and set cold water and a barley tea bag going.
"Very well. If you intend to go on providing that finest of fields — the company — and the rewards with it, then I shall simply go on showing you the finest performance as your Special Adviser."
He poured his prized cold-brew barley tea into a glass and went out onto the balcony of the high-rise.
Towards the American sky far across the sea, Atem raised the glass lightly.
"I am waiting, Kaiba. For the time when you return and challenge me to a Duel, on top of this perfect board — this life."
A shining take-home pay, an unshakeable social credit, and the finest of rivals.
The King of Duelists, who had built the systems of the living world completely into his own deck, wore a fearless and utterly satisfied Pharaoh smile, and tonight too savoured a very "mindful" mouthful.
Atem's one-man rampage, having acquired the absolute summoning right that was the title of KaibaCorp Special Strategic Adviser, did not confine itself to the workplace.
That transparent wall called social credit (read: status), which had tormented him at the real estate office by the station and at the budget SIM contract counter. It was now collapsing with unbelievable lightness.
"…I see. So this is the living world's 'high-class card.'"
Turning between his fingers the jet-black metal credit card that had arrived at his desk at home——a platinum card——Atem let out a small breath of admiration.
To a man who, only a few months earlier, had had dubious official identification and failed every screening one after another, invitations now came flying in from banks, from securities firms, and even from exclusive members-only salons.
Opening a securities account, contracting for high-class financial services — the instant he wrote KaibaCorp, Special Strategic Adviser in the occupation field, nothing snagged anywhere and every one of them was signed off as an immediate pass.
"And to think that I once dreaded a single gigabyte of allowance and was thrown out of an illegally built apartment… That one title from Kaiba's castle should overturn the world's judgement this far."
Atem felt in his own body the overwhelming destructive power — the attack points — of the attribute KaibaCorp within the systems of modern society.
But however far his social status leapt and however his account's Life Points swelled, the base of Atem's fundamental lifestyle, the so-called "mindful living (sort of)," did not waver.
On days off he wrapped himself in a well-tailored casual suit and enjoyed the finest ingredients bought in a luxury department store food hall (which is to say, dishes made by throwing them into the fully automatic cooking pot).
The finest beverage he could produce unaided was still cold-brew barley tea drawn from the luxury water server, but the crystals of ice floating in the glass shone divinely in the sunlight of the high-rise.
Sometimes he met up with Yugi and the others, going out to talked-about places he would once have watched from a distance with his finger in his mouth, or buying up the newest games. Days off enjoyed at full strength, with an adult's room to spare.
And above all, what had changed most in this life was the distance between him and the Kaiba household.
"Hey, Atem! The sample of that new board game I ordered came in today. Let's play it!"
"Very well, Mokuba. I shall analyse that game's strategy completely with my high-spec brain."
Having hit it off thoroughly with Mokuba, Atem had made a routine of drifting over to the Kaiba mansion on a day-off afternoon.
But——here too there was a fixed routine.
"Atem! You come to my house and once again you have not brought your deck. What is the meaning of it!"
Seto, who had appeared out of his private rooms like a storm, raised his Duel Disk and shouted.
Yes: whenever Atem went to the Kaiba mansion, he somehow forgot his deck every single time (or deliberately did not bring it).
"Forgive me, Kaiba. I came today only to test-play the new game with Mokuba. I left the Duel deck at my sacred territory (read: the apartment)."
"You…! Isono! Go to this man's apartment at once and——"
"Wait, Kaiba. It is already past ten at night. If you send for the deck now, dawn will have broken by the time the match ends. I must produce a perfect performance again tomorrow, and leave on time."
At a reply too reasonable to answer, Seto gave a "Nngh…!", a vein rising at his temple, and his words caught.
Turn up late at night and he raised "securing sleep" as a shield; meet him on a day off and he held to "deck not carried." The King of Duelists, who was supposed to have recovered his prime-era dignity, had at some point perfectly mastered the technique — the hand trap — for evading Seto's high-pitched Duel applications.
"Hmph… coward. Then do not imagine you are going home with nothing to show for it!"
Seto, who did not know how to withdraw, pulled an old-fashioned chess set and foreign abstract games down from a shelf in ill humour.
"If you cannot Duel, then we settle it with these! That half-rotted brain of yours — I shall split it open directly!"
"Ho… very well, Kaiba. Deck or no deck, if it is a game, I do not lose."
Across the heavy low table, two geniuses faced each other over a board.
The rules took one minute to explain. With few words the pieces moved, and an ultra-high-speed battle of thought unfolded.
No gaudy holographic staging as with a Duel Disk, no shouting. Only the quiet click… click… of pieces, and the sharp gazes of the two men crossing in the room.
"Ho. You play there, Kaiba. …But it is weak."
"Hmph. That move of yours was factored in ten moves ago!"
Watching from the side with a juice in his hand, Mokuba narrowed his eyes happily.
The Duel remained withheld, but this time spent throwing their wits against each other across a board had become, for Seto and for Atem alike, a comfortable margin of a kind.
Midnight.
"…A draw, then."
"Hmph. I shall let you off for today. Next time it will be on my company's new system, and I shall stop your breath for good!"
Seto flung it out while clearing the pieces from the board, and Atem, shrugging on his jacket, smiled fearlessly.
"Yes, I look forward to it, Kaiba. …Well then, Mokuba. Until next week."
Driven home by luxury limousine and back in his quiet room, Atem poured chilled water from the luxury server into a glass.
The finest everyday, never once dull, filled with stimulation and with peace, which he had sought in the darkness of the afterlife.
Clad in the strongest Equip Spell of all, social credit, surrounded in this living world by the finest friends and the finest nemesis, the Pharaoh's "mindful living (sort of)" went on, endlessly dear and endlessly bright.
The sight of Atem seated at the heavy dining table of the Kaiba mansion with a perfectly unremarkable face had by now become one of the household's ordinary scenes.
Over a dinner of the highest grade arranged by Mokuba, Seto would knit his brows and say, "I will not permit the vulnerabilities in my company's AI algorithms to be left as they are," and Atem, tilting his superb cold-brew barley tea, would answer fearlessly, "Heh. Then your move was weak, Kaiba." It had ceased to be unusual for Atem to sit in, at Seto's whim, on private dinners where a first-rate chef worked on the spot.
…But there were those who could not begin to accept this state of affairs.
"Hey, hey, hey! Are you serious, Atem!!"
In a casual café in Domino City, Joey leaned over the table and shouted with a face full of alarm.
"Is it true you've been just casually eating dinner at Kaiba's place lately!? That's Seto Kaiba we're talking about! Doesn't your stomach hurt, eating with that high-handed President who looks like he'd rip your deck up for making eye contact!?"
"He's right, Atem. At his house it wouldn't be even slightly strange if there was poison in it…" Tristan nodded, pale-faced, and Yugi peered into Atem's face with a wry smile.
But Atem himself was entirely unmoved, and swirled the ice in his iced coffee.
"What is there to be frightened of? Kaiba and Mokuba are both enjoyable company if you deal with them normally. Kaiba's views on games and his vision of the future in particular are truly interesting to listen to."
"'Enjoyable company'!????"
Joey and Tristan said it in unison and recoiled further, with the eyes of men seeing something they had never seen before.
"Are you sane…! You could search the entire universe and you'd still be the only person who could look at Seto Kaiba and call him enjoyable company…"
"…Your nerve really is on a different dimension…"
With Yugi's half-exasperated retort at his back, Atem smiled at his own pace and said, "Well. Play a game with him once and you will understand."
Meanwhile, Mokuba's visits to Atem's tower had been increasing too.
"Coming in—! …Whoa, Atem! This again!"
The moment he entered, Mokuba's voice went up in utter exasperation.
The closet doors stood wide open, and T-shirts and trousers just pulled from the fully automatic washer-dryer hung on hangers in a long row exactly as they were. The concept of folding did not exist anywhere in it. The familiar "full automation of the rotation."
"Wear it straight off the hanger, and once it comes off it goes straight to the machine… a perfect system, as ever."
"Don't call it a system! At least put them away in the closet! The room's incredibly clean and the appliances are high-class, and yet the way you live in it is just too distinctive…"
To the small Vice President holding his head, Atem said, "Heh. The pursuit of rationality," with a smug face, and offered him a glass of his prized luxury cold-brew barley tea.
And then one day.
On his way home from a dinner at the Kaiba mansion, Atem spoke to Seto as though the idea had just occurred to him.
"Kaiba. To be forever feasted at your castle and nothing more is contrary to a Pharaoh's courtesy. Next time I shall invite you to my sacred territory (read: the apartment). I shall be waiting with a perfect hospitality prepared."
"…What?"
Seto's eyebrow shot up.
"You, entertain me? Hmph. Do your best not to cause an explosion with those catastrophic domestic skills."
Seto snorted coldly, but a few days later, the moment Mokuba delivered "the latest report on Atem's domestic skills," every trace of composure vanished from his face.
"Nii-sama, apparently Atem's gone and bought himself a fancy fully automatic cooking pot, all fired up about it…"
"Hmph. A fine piece of equipment that cooks at the touch of a button. What is the problem?"
"Well… he was saying something like 'fuse the energy of every ingredient and a dish in the realm of the gods will be born,' and apparently he was about to shove raw meat and seafood and pre-cut vegetables — and, while he was at it, luxury chocolate and a barley tea bag — into the pot all together…!"
"…What did you say!?"
Seto's face went taut.
Atem's high-spec brain had put such total faith in the automation of the cooking apparatus that it had left the concept of ingredients going together entirely behind. Left alone, there was no telling what might be summoned from that modern transmutation circle.
"And he was fully intending to serve it on the day you came…"
"…Isono!"
Seto summoned the man in black at once.
"Secure a private room at the most prestigious long-established, strictly members-only restaurant in Domino City, immediately! The time is tonight!"
"Sir! It will be arranged!"
That evening.
In the kitchen at home, Atem was about to load the fully automatic cooking pot with a set of mysterious ingredients — premium beef, avocado, kimchi, and an energy drink as the secret note — when a short message arrived from Seto.
"I have not the slightest intention of being fed a suspicious object in your cramped room. A car is waiting out front. We are going."
"Mm…? I had intended to unveil my special fusion cuisine."
Tilting his head, Atem went down to the front of the building, where a jet-black limousine stood waiting.
He was carried to an ultra-exclusive restaurant standing deep within a quiet residential district, one that admitted no guest without an introduction. Shown into a private room looking out on a refined garden, he received course after course of delicate, perfect Japanese cuisine.
"Ho… splendid handling. The savour of the dashi is perfectly calculated."
Watching Atem relish the kaiseki in which a craftsman's skill shone, Seto propped an elbow and tilted his glass in ill humour.
"Hmph… I could hardly subject Seto Kaiba's valuable stomach to this destructive cooking of yours. …Rest easy. The bill goes entirely on company expenses (read: special adviser entertainment)."
"I see. I am grateful for your quick thinking, Kaiba."
Entirely unbothered, Atem carried a piece of superb sashimi to his mouth and smiled with unclouded brightness.
"Still, it is a shame I could not show you the true worth of my high-spec cooking pot. Next time I shall certainly serve you the finest 'creative cuisine' in my own rooms."
"I decline, now and forever! You will sit quietly and write code as my company's Special Adviser, and nothing else!"
Through the refined space of the restaurant rang Seto's furious voice and Atem's delighted laughter.
A strange and warm exchange with the Kaiba household, merciless recoiling from his friends, and a "mindful living (sort of)" that broke through every ceiling. The everyday of a former Pharaoh enjoying the systems of the living world to their limit went on, boisterous again today, and in the finest possible state of fulfilment.
